The DOE divided the U.S into 3 regions (Northern, Southwestern and Southeastern). The Northern region for furnaces contains the following States:

Alaska, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont,Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois,  Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming

What does this mean for you? Well if your furnace is in a finished area of your home, an attic, crawlspace, or other inconvenient location, you may have to spend a substantial amount more than that of a standard furnace. The majority of that cost is to modify the structure of your home to accept a high efficient (HE) furnace and you paying for the advanced technology. The bottom line is that you have until May 1st 2013 to purchase and install a standard furnace at a lower cost.

We will always encourage our clients to consider high efficiency. It reduces our dependency on foreign oil, limits our carbon footprint and encourages technological growth. This pursuit creates jobs encourages out of the box thinking, helps the economy, and puts more money in our client’s pockets every month through lower utility bills. Not to mention that it is exciting to see our civilization racing to achieve 100% perfect combustion and equipment efficiency, which to this day humanity has been unable to achieve. We will keep an eye on these developments and try to update this website to reflect those changes as they happen. In the meantime, please visit the DOE and other related sources for this article below.

LINKS:

http://www.regulations.gov

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/appliance_standards/residential/pdfs/cacfurn_dfr_confirmation.pdf

Air Conditioning

In Denver, it’s not unusual for homeowners to have significantly high cooling bills. It’s the price paid for living in a hot climate that is a mile closer to the sun. To ensure that you can count on your air conditioner to operate efficiently, you’ll need to schedule regular preventative maintenance. An annual tune-up will help to keep your system free of dirt and debris buildup, which can significantly hinder efficiency.

In addition, if you’re relying on an aging A/C to cool your home, it might be time to consider upgrading. By doing so, you’ll benefit from advancements in cooling technology that allow new, higher-efficiency A/C models.

Furnace

A central part of your air conditioning system that often gets overlooked is the furnace.  Most people stop thinking about their furnace when the weather heats up and they no longer need to heat their home.  However, the blower motor and the filter are still an integral part of your air conditioning system.  If the filter is clogged or dirty, it will not allow air to pass through it, which quickly heats up your unit and can cause it to freeze up.  A dirty blower motor will not push the air efficiently, and waste energy trying to push the cold air out the vents.

Speaking of vents…

Ductwork

Your home’s ductwork is a series of interconnected pipes that weave through your home’s floors, ceilings, and walls. It delivers conditioned air that your A/C generates. Any weaknesses in the ducts will not only affect energy savings, but also greatly impact your home’s comfort.

To maximize air delivery, have a professional assess your ducts for disconnected pipes and air leaks. In addition, replacing old ducts with better insulated ones installed in areas like your attic can reduce energy losses.  If your basement is unfinished, this is another great place to start.  Another option is to have a professional come in your house and Aeroseal it.  Aeroseal puts escaping air under pressure and causes polymer particles to stick first to the edges of a leak, then to each other until the leak is closed.  This effectively seals all your ductwork to prevent any escaping air, even ductwork that is hidden by drywall.

Thermostat

The final component of your home cooling system, the thermostat, specifically a programmable thermostat, helps to ensure that your air conditioner runs only when you’re at home. While this practice is easy to do with a manual thermostat, a programmable device allows you to set it and forget it.  A  thermostat, like the Honeywell Pro 6000, allows you to program for leaving home, returning home, asleep, and awake times, and allows you to individualize the programs for every day of the week.Further, experts estimate that by raising the home temperature in the summer by 10 degrees — while you’re away from home or at night — you can expect to save about 10 percent annually.  That adds up to big savings with today’s energy prices.

For any advice, contact Matt through the “Contact Us” tab on this website.  Estimates are always free!

Anyway, back to today’s post.

There are several things you can do to help your energy costs and go green.  Colorado has the perfect climate for a swamp cooler.  It’s hard to think about your cooling needs when it’s already so cold out, but now is the time to start budgeting and planning for the summer season.  Swamp coolers work by dripping water on pads, and then air is pushed through the pads and into your home.  Living in a ranch home, we can keep our house comfortable (and sometimes downright cold) in the hottest summer weather for just a few pennies a day.  Swamp coolers run on 110 power, versus 220 for an air conditioner.  Here’s a handy chart for comparison.

Since Colorado is so dry, a swamp cooler helps with dry skin because of the amount of humidity that it puts in the air.

A programmable thermostat is a small investment (about $50) that you can make now that will help lower your heating costs.  A programmable thermostat works by allowing you to set different temperatures based on the day.  There are 4 main settings you can use already programmed in (you can add more or less based on your preferences): Wake, Leave, Return, and Sleep.  The wake setting is the temperature you would like to wake up to, the leave then lowers the temperature for when you leave the house (to go to work or will be gone for more than 2 hours), return is the temperature you would like the house to be when you return to the house, and sleep lowers the temperature when you are asleep (better for your sleep cycles and when you don’t need as much heat).

These are two ways to start going green without going in the red this season.  Happy Holidays to all of you!

What this means to you – if you have a crawl space or a finished basement, it will be much harder to place a 90 or 95% efficient furnace.  Why?  90% efficient or above furnace require external venting.  Similar to your car exhaust, you don’t want that exhausted into your house.  80% efficient furnaces commonly vent through a metal piping system called B-vent.  B-vent is run up through the walls in your house and up an out of your roof.  90% or greater furnace are called “condensing” furnaces, which means they produce water in their exhaust.  With B-vent, the water, and all the hazardous chemicals it contains, would drip back down into your furnace, and eventually onto your floor.  Instead, a horizontal vent pipe is run to the outside at a slight angle to allow the toxic gas and the condensate to be pushed outside.  Now – back to how this affects you.  If you have a small crawl space or finished basement, external venting may require holes be drilled in the side of your house and drywall to properly vent those gases outside.

So how can you tell if you have an 80% efficient furnace?  Look at the furnace.  If it is all metal, including all the pipes running to it and from it, it is 80%.  If you have any PVC (white, plastic-looking piping), you are already at a minimum of 90% efficiency.

There are several things that you can do to lower those monthly heating bills:

• Use a programmable thermostat to lower the temperature in your house while you are not there and at night.
• Set your thermostat to the lowest comfortable setting (typically around 65-66 degrees Fahrenheit) and heat up the room that you are in.  If you have small children, an individual room heater with an attached thermostat (Honeywell makes a great one with really good safety features) will help keep them comfortable during naps.
• Consider adding a whole house humidifier to your existing furnace. Humid air feels warmer than drier air.
• Set your ceiling fans to turn in a clockwise motion.  Doing this pulls down the warm air from your ceiling (remember that warm air rises) and pushes it back down the sides of the room.
• Walk slowly around the inside outer portions of your house in shorts and a t-shirt or tank top, taking care near windows, and entrances to your home (front door, back door, and sliding doors) to see if you can feel any drafts coming in.  My wife was passing through the kitchen in a tank top and noticed a draft coming in through the swamp cooler and by the stove.  Turns out that the swamp cooler had been winterized and packed with insulation at the top, but not the bottom, thus allowing a draft to come in (and allowing warm air to escape).  There was also an old exhaust vent in the back of the house that was no longer in use.  Stuffing that with insulation and sealing it off helped stop both of those drafts.
• If your windows are drafty, consider using plastic (available at any home improvement store) to cover over them for the winter.  Use heavy curtains to block additional drafts.
• Ensure that your furnace is tuned up and filters have been changed for the season.  Proper air flow will ensure that your furnace satisfies quicker because you are heating more efficiently.

All of these tips will help you lower your heating bills while still keeping you warm in this chilly winter season.

How can you alleviate the dry air in your house?  How can you do it without constantly refilling humidifiers and buying filters for room humidifiers?

Installing a whole house humidifier is the solution.  A whole house humidifier works by taking water and running it through a pad on the humidifier that is attached to your furnace.  When your furnace turns on, warm air flows over the wet pad, adding humidity to the air before it blows up through your vents.

There are several different types of humidifiers.

• A bypass humidifier – it consists of a cabinet, reservoir, rotating drum with motor, and float. Mounted on the supply plenum, warm air forced into the cabinet and flows over the rotating drum. The drum is a sponge or foam fabric stretched over a plastic frame. A small motor slowly spins the drum through a tray of water fed from the domestic water supply and regulated by a float valve. As the wet drum is exposed to the flow of warm air, water evaporates and humidifies the air. Ducted into the return air plenum, it is mixed with supply air and ducted to the house.
• A power humidifier – a power humidifier has a larger cabinet and no duct to the return plenum, and a fan moves air across the wet drum or wet screens and blows it back into the supply plenum to be blown with the warm air from your furnace.
• A steam humidifier – made of metal, a float valve keeps the required amount of water in the reservoir. Mounted in the return or supply ducts or plenums, line voltage current is passed through a heating element immersed in the reservoir to make steam. The control wiring will include a switch to turn the blower on during operation for increased humidification even when the thermostat is not calling for heat.  The issues that may be faced with a steam humidifier is that in Colorado, a separate water filtration system is required to ensure that the minerals in the water do not harm the system.

Humidifiers can greatly ease your comfort during the dry, winter months in Colorado.  Double H will sit down with you and discuss your needs and recommend the best system for you.

If you have a standing pilot furnace (also known as a pilot light), it is, at best, 30% efficient.  This type of furnace is constantly burning fuel and may go out, which makes the furnace not work.

By going with a newer furnace, you will get an ignition system, either glow or spark ignition.  You will only burn fuel when the furnace is actually running.

When you are in the market for a new furnace, you can purchase an 80%, 90%, or 95% efficient furnace.  You will pay double the price for a 95% efficient furnace over the 80%, but the 95% efficient furnace will pay for itself within 10 years, and you’ll come out ahead the last 10 years of the furnace life (average furnace life is 20 years).

Taking into consideration what type of furnace efficiency works for you is important when determining what type of furnace you should buy.  Double H will outline pricing information for each type of furnace that you request for your consideration during your next installation.

Double H HVAC recommends that every customer follow these simple rules:

1.  Get multiple bids.  Most companies will provide free estimates and written bids.  Read what the warranties are, what the company charges for a trip charge, and any additional fees the company may charge.

2.  Talk to your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members.  Do they recommend anyone that is reliable and has provided excellent service for them in the past?  Check the BBB website to find reliable businesses.

3.  Even if you have a company that you use regularly, check around when you have a major investment or upgrade.

4. Make sure that any contractor that comes into your home is licensed and insured.

Double H HVAC is strictly a referral-based business.  We don’t advertise in the Yellow Pages or with Google. We strive to ensure that every customer is treated fairly and honestly, because if we don’t do the job right the first time, or make it right, we not only lose our original customer, but every person that the original customer knows as well.  We want our customers to be treated right, treated fair, and be given the best equipment for their dollar.